Degrees of Separation
by Ropeable
Summary: In the middle of a war zone, BJ learns that while feelings are fleeting, it may just be possible to love two people.
1. Default Chapter

Well, another BJ story, because the way he misses his family is just so darn cute, and provides excellent fodder for a bored fan.

**Disclaimer: **If you think I own anything to do with MASH go to the 4077th and I'll get Sidney Freedman to look you over.

Twice removed and on the far side of anarchy, the normal rules of engagement ceased to exist. Not that he was ever in combat- he was a doctor after all- but instead of continuing to live what was considered a normal life, everyone seemed to disregard those personal rules and engage in behaviour that would be frowned upon back home. While BJ thought people would try and retain some sense of normalcy, the people at the 4077th seemed to revel in the strangeness of their environment, embracing it with gusto.

One prime example of the loss of the 'moral code' was the disregard for the commandment 'Thou shall not commit adultery.' If BJ were given a nickel for every time he saw someone of the male gender sneaking out of the female showers, he'd be able to retire on the funds once the war was over. Not that he could judge particularly well- he'd only been in Korea for less than two months- but he would have thought that the priest would have taken a more active interest in the 'extra-curricular' activities that many people seemed to engage in.

BJ mulled over his thoughts while making his way to the showers, glad for the moment's respite. Hawkeye wasn't with him, and BJ missed the company, although saying that on the way to the showers might be misconstrued. It was true though; the small size of the camp meant that you were always in someone else's pockets. In the Swamp personal possessions were mixed together in one jumble of goods; BJ often found his elbow in a pile of mashed potatoes in the Mess Tent; and it wasn't uncommon to feel as though you were forming a special bond with an individual when you stepped on their foot in a rabid attempt to remove a resisting fragment from a mangled piece of flesh.

BJ passed Klinger, the latter making his way around the camp realigning the border rocks, dressed in a pink gingham shift. The dress was so short that when Klinger bent over BJ was greeted with a rather unfortunate view.

"What are you doing, Klinger?" BJ asked in amusement. "If you're really that bored I'm sure that the bed pans in post-op need emptying."

"Very funny, sir," Klinger replied sarcastically, straightening up and rubbing the sweat off his brow. "I'm doing this on the orders of Major Burns. Seemed to think that this would add a touch of class to the camp."

BJ laughed heartily, wondering how, in the middle of a war zone, Frank thought the issue that needed immediate attention was the garden. "May I offer a suggestion about your attire, though?"

Klinger narrowed his eyes, guessing what was coming next. "If you're gonna tell me to get into uniform save your breath. I've become allergic to khaki since I've come over here, and I flare up!"

"Nothing like that," BJ laughed. "But I do feel that it's in the best interests in everyone if you put some more, ah, substantial underclothes on. We don't want to get Sidney Freedman down more often than we need to."

Klinger nodded acquiescence, glad that he wasn't getting bawled out again. He often felt that his outfits didn't receive the praise they deserved, even though they obviously added a touch of class – a bit of needed glitz - to life in camp.

BJ continued on his way, knocking on the door of the showers before he entered, and cursing as he pulled on the chain and icy water issued from the tap. Sighing, he picked up his washcloth and began to lather up his soap. Peggy had sent it from home after he had told her that he missed that way she smelt, the clean alcoholic odour of gardenias that would greet him when he buried his face in her hair.

But it was no use thinking those thoughts now, because Peggy was far away, and such thoughts had an unfortunate effect on some parts of his anatomy. Diverting himself, BJ began to rub shampoo through his hair, roughly massaging his scalp. Soap began to run in his eyes and he shut them quickly, blindly fumbling for a towel.

"Hey, Hawk, do you think you could get that for me?" BJ asked the empty room, before realising that he was on is own. And for one flash of a second BJ could understand how adrift Hawkeye felt when he realised his bunkmate had left without saying goodbye. Hell, BJ was growing dependent on Hawkeye and he had only known the guy for two months. But with his eyes closed against the icy spray an unwelcome memory entered his consciousness.

"_I missed him by ten minutes! Ten lousy minutes!" an angry Hawkeye proclaims, pulling at his dirty fatigues as he talks to Radar. _

Sometimes, late at night when he listened to the rhythmic breathing of his bunkmate BJ wondered if Hawkeye would be angry if he left without saying goodbye, or whether Trapper was a special case.

Because for the first time, BJ realised that everything in life was relative. Korea hadn't existed for BJ until he opened his draft notice, despite the saturation of articles in the newspapers. The 4077th hadn't been tangible until he'd dumped his suitcase on the floor of the Swamp and had been plied with glasses of homemade gin. But for Hawkeye, Korea had existed for an extra year, a year where men called Trapper and Henry played a vital role in the camp activities. They had played cards in the Swamp, eaten in the Mess Tent and performed surgery in the OR, but for a year of living at the 4077th there was precious little to show they had ever set foot in camp.

BJ realised that sometimes people assumed he was an incarnate form of Trapper. It had happened more than once; they'd be sitting in the Swamp, talking about the latest way to foil the meeting plans of the khaki majors and Hawkeye would sit up, smile widening and say, "Hey, Trap-."

Then nothing. Sometimes Hawkeye would attempt to fix his mistake, _("Hey, let's Trap them in the Supply Tent together!), _but more often Hawkeye wouldn't even bother because there was nothing to say. Despite the fact that Hawkeye never mentioned his previous bunkmate after his first encounter with BJ, Trapper was always present; someone that had reached mythological proportions that BJ could never live up too.

After rubbing the residual soap out of his hair, BJ picked up his razor and propped his handheld mirror up against the ledge so that he could shave. The air was condensing against his pimpled skin and he tried to keep his hand steady as he held the blade.

How long does it take to forget someone that you had lived with for a whole year? Would you have to make a conscious effort, or did your recollections simply blur around the edges, as if you were looking at them through a sheet of frosted glass?

Come to that, how long would it be until BJ forgot Peggy and Erin? Not that he intended too; he still knew all the important details, and the plethora of photographs he'd bought with him helped fill in the gaps, but BJ realised that he was already beginning to forget some of Peggy's idiosyncrasies that were such an integral part of her character. Small, stupid things that would mean nothing to anyone else, like the way she drenched her pancakes in syrup and then kissed him with her sticky lips, grinning as he squirmed under her ministrations.

And Erin, BJ thought wistfully, grabbing his bathrobe off the hook on the wall and pulling it on. BJ hadn't even had the opportunity to get to know Erin before he was drafted. The heart-wrenching thing was that he didn't know enough about his daughter to start forgetting her.

BJ left the confines of the shower, making a brief detour to the Swamp to replace his bathrobe with some fatigues, before making his way to the Mess Tent. Upon opening the door he saw a slumped form of Hawkeye talking with Radar, and he piled up his tray and made his way over to the bench.

Sitting down next to Radar, BJ asked, "Room for one more?"

"I do believe," began Hawkeye, "that it's a bit late to be asking since you're already sitting."

"'Course there's room for you, sir," Radar replied, spitting crumbs across the table in his hurriedness to speak.

BJ favoured Radar with a smile, before looking down at the Corporal's tray. "Radar, are you sure that you're going to eat all that? You've got enough there to feed all of South Korea."

"And the leftovers could be sent to the North," Hawkeye agreed, poking at a dubious green lump that had taken up residence on the edge of his plate. "I do believe that the Geneva Convention states that it's illegal to serve food that was previously used as ammunition." He pushed the tray to one side, sighing into the depths of his coffee cup.

"You're not going to eat that? After all the trouble that Igor went to make it taste so nice?" BJ asked, following suit and pushing his tray away. Looking at the food scraps, BJ realised why one of the main preoccupations in camp was food.

"I could have Igor court martialed for the killing of my taste buds. We can't all be troopers like Radar here and eat everything that's put in front of us."

"Yeah," BJ replied, nudging the small Corporal with his elbow. "You could market yourself as a garbage disposal when you get back to Iowa. You'd make a fortune."

Radar looked up, glaring at the two Captains grinning at him. "Can't you guys stop it? You're so embarrassing, and everyone's looking!"

Hawkeye began to glare at BJ as well, a small grin betraying his true emotions. "You need to be nicer to Radar here," Hawkeye declared. "Didn't you know that he's doing the whole army a service? He's stockpiling food, so if we ever get caught without supplies we just need to cut him open and we'll have our own general store."

"O'Reilly's," BJ mused, "It's got a nice ring to it. Do we get a discount if we're regular customers?"

Radar attempted to swallow to make some reply, but Hawkeye held up his hand and stood, motioning for BJ to follow him. BJ rose gladly, knowing that a drink with Hawkeye was most often accompanied with stupid, stimulating conversation that made the ache for Peggy slightly duller.

"I do believe that an extra large drink is required to make up for the lack of food," Hawkeye declared, in the voice of someone stating that equal rights had just been declared for Blacks.

In the Swamp, sitting on their greasy respective beds, they got straight down to business, pouring the clear liquid into dirty martini glasses, sculling them one after the other. The alcohol caused a blaze of fire to burn in BJ's throat so that after the first glass he was no longer assaulted with the taste, and the drinking became a routine, a simple glass-to-mouth action.

And the alcohol worked its magic, loosening tongues and lubricating mind processes, so that everything seemed infinitely clearer than it was several hours ago. Through the haze, BJ tried to articulate what he had been thinking earlier.

"D'you ever think that when you go back it'll all be different?" he slurred, closing his eyes so that the room stopped spinning.

"Of course," Hawkeye replied, and BJ could hear the laughter in his friend's voice. Hawkeye, who didn't seem to be affected by the excess liquor at all, mocked the gagging actions of a drunk BJ. "I have this continual fear that I'm going to go home and my dad will have sold my clubs. Happened when he thought I was dead, actually."

"You're not dead," BJ replied, confused. "You're here. But I s'pose it's like being dead." He reached forward for the gin, steadying himself on the edge of his cot.

_And he ignores the voice that he hears in his head, Peg's voice, telling him that it's no good to be drinking too much. You're driving later; remember? And you always get so maudlin when you're drunk. Maybe I could get the violins out in preparation? _

"Are you sure you should be having another?" a voice asks. But it's Hawkeye, not Peggy, although in his inebriated state they seem to be the same person.

"You're having another!" BJ pointed out triumphantly, as though this proved some great argument

"I," Hawkeye returned, voice barely affected by the alcohol, "have turned drinking in to an art form. Were it an Olympic sport, I would be the world champion."

Tempted to reply, BJ tried to stand, but the room persisted spinning, so he settled for pulling himself up against the bookshelf behind him. "I think that I'm going to go back and forget them, and they will have forgotten me, too. I just thought up this theory before," BJ proclaimed, in the self-righteous tone of the drunk, "that the brain's a lot like a washing machine."

"How so?" Hawkeye asked, reclining comfortably on his cot. "I'm intrigued."

"We used to have this washing machine at home, and you couldn't do your full load, because if you kept pushing all the clothes in it would start thumping. So if you wanted to wash that hat, you had to pull out the skirt. So I'm going to learn all this stuff about Korea that my brain's going to start thumping and pulling out all my memories of Peggy and Erin. Get it?" BJ asked.

"Sure," replied Hawkeye easily. "You just compared your brain to a household appliance. Although you seem to be completing the spin cycle pretty well right now."

BJ reached for more gin, but Hawkeye put his hand over the jar. "I think you've had enough," Hawkeye said, "bad for the brain cells, you know."

Bitter laughter filled the Swamp at this speech. "All it can do is make me forget stuff. But then that's a bad idea because forgetting is kind of like the not remembering I was telling you about earlier. I think I will have some more." And he reached for the gin again, but no god in the world could have bestowed the gift of balance on BJ at that moment.

He hit the floor.

Please review! Look out for the next chapter, _Of limbo and legs_, out soon.


	2. Of limbo and legs

If you think I own anything to do with MASH go and have a lie down and I'll get Sidney to have a look at you.

The dress was magenta pink, composed of multiple layers of taffeta and lace that bled into the inky darkness. But that was all right; at that moment in time it wasn't the colour that concerned him.

_Goaded by the feel of her fingers tangling through his hair, BJ slid his fingers down her sides, smiling when she arched away from him, giggling when he tickled her. However, Peggy couldn't move far before her hip hit the handbrake and they both stopped their fevered groping. _

"_Maybe we should continue this inside," Peggy breathed, coy smile inviting. _

"_Are you sure that's a good idea?" BJ asked. _

"_Mum and daddy are out at the yacht club meeting. They won't be back till late." Without waiting for an answer, Peggy smoothed her dress down and opened the door of the car, extending a hand. "Come on, BJ! It'll be awfully lonely up there alone." _

_Closing his eyes for a minute, BJ weighed up his options. He could go up with Peggy and have a great time, or he could be a wet blanket and take the safe option and leave. Was there really a choice? _

_BJ stepped out of the car and followed his girlfriend, pretending to cover his eyes with a hand as she reached under the flowerpot for the hidden front door key. The dark made it difficult for Peggy to get the key in the lock, but after what seemed like an eternity she swung the door open, motioning for BJ to follow. _

_He realised that this would be his last opportunity to leave. The logical part of his brain, the part that was telling him Peggy's dad would hunt him down and shoot him if he found them together, was instructing him to leave, but certain other parts of his body, that were decidedly_ less_ logical, urged him forward. _

"_One question," BJ said. "What are we going to do if your parents come home early?" _

_Peggy sighed in indulgent annoyance. "I'm sure that we can think of something." She comically pushed a hip out and rested her hand on it. "Coming?" _

_What kind of guy was going to refuse an offer like that? He followed her, reaching out and latching on to her wrist. He'd been in Peggy's house often, but usually with the light on, and the darkness made him prone to running into foreign objects but also increased the feeling that that they were engaging in a clandestine meeting. _

_Rather that turning and continuing up the stairs to her bedroom, Peggy took a sharp left and crouched down beside a small cabinet. BJ, running his hand up and down the wall, finally felt a light switch under his fingertips and turned the light on. Peggy was suddenly illuminated pouring a quantity of bourbon into the bottom of two glasses. _

_Without speaking she resumed their previous path, climbing the stairs until she came to a door with a colourful plaque on it, proclaiming "Peggy's Room." _

"_My parents still treat me as though I'm five," she explained in exasperation, shutting the door behind them both and turning the light on. "Do you like it? I did some redecorating a while ago- got rid of all that pink stuff that Mum thought was so cute." _

_BJ nodded in agreement. The room was decked out in various shades of blue: a baby blue on the walls, blending into the sky blue of the carpet and contrasting with the indigo coverlet on the bed. While he was looking, he felt her come up behind him and slowly kiss him on the neck. _

_He twirled around quickly in response, kissing her on the lips. She moaned, tightening her hands around his neck. Reaching for her glass, she took a sip of her alcohol and kissed him again, giggling as he chocked slightly, before pushing her down on to the bed. He drew his hands up and down her legs before resting them on her hips. _

"_Am I squashing you?" he asked, head centimetres away for hers. "I think I'm too heavy." _

"_No way," Peggy replied. "It'd be a good way to go, anyway. Dying happy, and all." _

"_Yeah," BJ agreed. "I can just see it in the morning papers. Respectable girl suffocated by groping boyfriend. It'd go down really well."_

"_Don't you know by now," Peggy whispered, "that I'm not nearly respectable as everyone thinks I am?" _

_BJ closed his eyes and breathed deeply, smelling the bourbon she had skulled earlier. It's not an unpleasant smell, just an unexpected one: Peggy was the girl that usually came up smelling of talcum powder and roses. Perhaps that's what attracted to him to her in the first place; to everyone else, Peggy was the perfect, all-American girl, baking biscuits and doing the top button up on her shirts. _

_But that was just the surface veneer; below was someone mischievous, desperately lonely, and completely and utterly in love with BJ Hunnicutt. _

"_I love you so much," Peggy whispered, "So much." _

"_I - love - you – too," BJ replied, punctuating each word with a kiss, as if kissing her would make her less lonely. Because, for as much as he loved her, BJ knew that Peggy didn't have many friends. She was too quiet to ever talk to strangers and too proud to acknowledge that she hated sitting by herself while a swirling social sphere carried on without her. _

_Despite all her efforts not to care, Peggy knew that loneliness cut more deeply and accurately than a scalpel. Sometimes, lying awake in the dark, she realised that she loved BJ so much because he was a substitute for a whole group of girlfriends as well as a boyfriend. _

_She sat up unexpectedly and so forcefully that BJ almost fell off the bed. "You don't understand. I _lo_ve you."_

_His brow knitted in confusion. "I know. I love you too." _

_She sighed, kissing him on the temple, hating that he didn't understand what she was trying to say. At that moment, she realised that actions would speak louder that words. Reaching behind her she undid the large bow of her dress, reaching up to the zipper. She undid the fastener slowly, before slipping the bodice of her shoulders, so that she was sitting in her petticoat. She reached up and touched him on the chin, kissing him gently, the lace on the shoulders betraying her quick breathing. _

"_No," she replied. "I _love_ you."_

"_Oh," BJ said, ever so eloquently. "Oh." At that moment he lost his faculties of speech and sat there incoherently. "Oh." And then. "Are you sure?" _

"_What a stupid question!" Peggy laughed musically, breaking the tension that had surrounded them. "Do you think I would be sitting here, almost in the nude mind you, if I wasn't sure? Sometimes I wonder why they accepted you into med school." _

"_I don't want you to feel pressured in to anything. I mean have you got anything? Have you thought about this? What I mean is--." _

_Peggy cut his off by reaching over and lying on top of him, kissing him fiercely. BJ was positive that his lips would be bruised the next day. Not wasting any time, she began unbuttoning BJ' shirt, while he attempted to kick off his shoes. He began to suck on her neck, hoping to leave a red mark, when Peggy suddenly stopped. _

"_What's wrong?" BJ asked, kissing her on the cheek. _

"_They're home early!" she replied, listening to the creaks from downstairs. "They said they wouldn't be home for another--," she looked at the clock on the wall, before adding in astonishment "is it two o'clock already? I really loose track of the time when you feel me up." _

"_What are we going to do?" BJ whispered urgently. "I doubt your parents are going to say hello and offer me a coffee." _

"_Put your clothes back on and turn off the light. They'll probably think that I'm already in bed. Poor little darling being tired after the dance and all that stuff," Peggy replied, just as urgently. "Then go." _

_They worked furiously, but as quietly as possibly, attempting not to alert the adults below that a randy teenage boy was currently in their daughter's room. BJ chucked his shoes back on and buttoned his shirt, while Peggy, took her hair out and pulled on a nightgown. Suddenly they heard a voice that was coming closer and closer. "I'm just going to put my head in and check on her. Just make sure that she got home safely," rumbled the deep baritone of Peggy's father. _

"_Oh no," Peggy breathed, "Daddy." _

"_What am I supposed to do?" BJ mouthed urgently, seeing little way of getting out of such a sticky situation. _

"_Just go!" Peggy replied, sitting on the bed and drawing the covers over her legs. She suddenly saw the two bourbon glasses and hid them under the bed, praying that her father wouldn't be able to smell the alcohol. She could always say that someone tipsy had spilled their drink on her, but that would be contradicting the fact the dance had been strictly alcohol free, and that the principle had been policed as closely as the Russian arms stores. _

"_Where?" BJ asked, again. There were few hiding spots in Peggy's room, and even fewer that would fit a man as tall as BJ. There was always under the bed, he mused, feeling as though he had stepped onto the set of a bad movie. _

"_Just go!" Peggy replied, lying down. _

_Which was why BJ found himself shinning down the drainpipe at two in the morning. _

_BJ tried to balance himself on the windowsill, halfway down the face of the house, praying that he wouldn't fall and break his leg. Falling would also involve trampling Peggy's mother's award winning pansies, which would result in decapitation if he were discovered as the culprit. _

_Suddenly a window opened and Peggy's figure leant out. Whispering loudly, she giggled and said in her deep voice: _

"Don't wake him Radar. I'm fine if it's just a broken leg."

BJ moaned, rolling over and sitting up. "What is it? Casualties?"

Hawkeye shook his head, picking his socks off the floor and smelling them. Deciding they were too dirty he threw them away, asking Radar to pass him another pair.

"How much did I drink?" BJ asked. "I feel as though the Red Sox used my head for batting practice."

"Actually they did," Hawkeye replied, smiling. "We packaged you up and sent you over so they could all have a whack."

"Then why the hell did they send me back? Even staying with the Red Sox would be better then being here."

"Said that your head was no use. Too hollow," Hawkeye laughed, filling up a mug with coffee. "You want one?"

BJ nodded, picking up the mug near his cot and passing it to his bunkmate. Hawkeye passed the full mug back and BJ downed the drink in several gulps. The door banged open and Frank entered, obviously back from a late night rendezvous with Margaret.

"How are you going, Frank? Nice night?" Hawkeye asked, lifting his eyebrows suggestively. Frank turned quickly, sneering at the smirking doctor.

"I don't have to put up with your sass, Pierce. Need I remind you that I am your superior officer?" Frank snapped, sitting down on his bunk.

"Yeah, it only took a war to make you superior, too," Hawkeye replied, rolling his eyes at BJ, who missed the action, having turned his back when Frank snapped the light on. "Have a bit of respect, would you Frank? BJ here just drunk the still dry, and he's feeling especially sorry for himself. Some compassion maybe?"

"Compassion?" Frank laughed, unbuttoning his shirt and reaching for his pajamas. "That'll get you nowhere when dealing with the Reds." Waving his hands left and right to illustrate the gravity of being sympathetic, Frank knocked over the glass that he kept next to his bed. BJ sat up when it shattered.

"Do you mind Frank? Only it feels like a rhinoceros wearing roller skates is doing the samba in my head," BJ moaned, throwing an arm over his eyes.

"If you were a real American, someone that fully understood the work we were doing here, you would appreciate how important it is to always be alert. You wouldn't waste your time drinking that stuff you brew, pretending that it's high class," Frank rejoined.

"Sorry about him," Hawkeye interrupted, "we tried to redecorate, but he got stuck in preaching white. God mode, you know."

"White? Ha!" Frank replied. "Me, I'm red, _white _and blue all over."

"So you're a cockade. If I had a lapel I'd stick you through my buttonhole. I've got to go. See you at breakfast folks," Hawkeye finished, dragging on a thick woolen beanie.

"He's not a cockade," BJ replied, "just a coc-."

"Tut tut, you shouldn't use such vulgar language so early in the morning, you know," Hawkeye chastised, disregarding the fact he used worse language more frequently than anyone else in camp.

"Wait up," BJ said, sitting up. "I'll come with you. The smell of purity's too strong for me to sleep in here."

"Then shake a leg. The patient's been waiting a while," Hawkeye replied, stamping his feet on the ground in an attempt to warm up.

"Ta da!" BJ said, throwing the blankets off his legs and standing up, showing that he had fallen asleep in his crumpled fatigues, so there was no need to get dressed. "Let's go."

They crossed the compound quickly, and BJ told himself that he was walking slightly closer to his companion for the warmth. Besides, as long as no one mentioned anything then there was no need to question his actions or feelings; they could be shoved away into a dark recess of his mind where they couldn't be analysed. Rather than move away, Hawkeye also leaned closer, so they finished their walk hip to hip.

"Who's assisting?" BJ asked, once they entered the OR.

"I was going to wake Margaret, but since you're here, you can be the nurse for the evening," Hawkeye smiled, walking over to where a young man was lying on a narrow trolley, while BJ tried to ignore the innuendo that could be read into that simple statement.

"How are you feeling? We always like to get our patients to sit for a while before we operate. Gives them a chance to adjust to the ambiance of the place. It's called the Ritz on a budget," Hawkeye chatted, obviously trying to get the young man at ease. "The budget was non-existent."

Hawkeye asked for the x-rays and BJ handed them over, and they looked over them together. "It looks pretty simple to me," BJ said.

They worked quickly, wetting the plaster and wrapping it tightly, moving the broken limb as little as possible. The white dust settled in Hawkeye's hair, and BJ thought that it made him look senile.

"That should stay pretty straight," BJ said as they washed their hands, making no attempt to stay quiet. From his reactions during the setting the doctors could see that the young man was still numb from the anesthetic that had been administered.

"We'll take him into post-op and x-ray him in the morning," Hawkeye yawned.

"I'll buy you a drink in the Swamp if there's anything wrong with that leg," BJ said.

"Mmm," Hawkeye replied, absentmindedly, and BJ could see that there was something weighing on his mind. Hawkeye shook his head and smiled at BJ. "Well, there's nothing that we can do at the moment anyway, and there's a beautiful young nurse that's just waiting for a physical."

Hawkeye waved and turned, exiting post-op in a flurry of olive fatigues, leaving BJ bereft and adrift, a piece of flotsam in the quiet ward.

Thank you to everyone that reviewed chapter one, it was appreciated.

Cockade: bundle of red, white and blue ribbons used as a revolutionary symbol during the French revolution.


End file.
